Tech Sets Aim At Big 12 Tournament Title
May 16, 2001 | Baseball
May 16, 2001
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THE RED RAIDERS
Texas Tech will be making its fifth straight appearance in the Big 12 Tournament where the team will face Oklahoma in the first game on Wednesday. Texas Tech has an overall record of 39-16-1 and finished in second place in the Big 12 Conference with a mark of 19-10-1.
The Red Raiders are 27-6-1 in their last 34 games and are one of the hottest teams coming into this week's tournament. Texas Tech will be paired (win or lose) with the Texas/Texas A&M game.
RAIDERS ON THE AIR
For the eighth consecutive season, the entire Texas Tech baseball game schedule will be broadcast live on the Red Raider Radio Network and made available to its statewide affiliates. Play-By-Play voice of the Red
Raiders Mark Finkner will make the call in this his sixth season. He will be joined by popular color commentator Ryan Hyatt who will be in the broadcast booth for his fourth season. Finkner and Hyatt will host a 20-minute pregame show and will have postgame interviews with players and coaches. Tech baseball games can be heard locally on KKAM 1340 AM.
TWO PITCHERS WITH 11+ WINS
Texas Tech can probably lay claim to the fact that its the only school in the country to have two pitchers with 11 wins each on the season. Chris Phillips became the first Tech to pitcher to pick up 11 as he did it in a complete game against Kansas on April 28th. Brandon Roberson earned win No. 11 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on May 2nd giving Tech two 11 win pitchers. Both Phillips and Roberson are on track to break former Tech pitcher Shane Wright's Big 12 and school record 14 wins that he set during the 1998 season.
ROBERSON ON A ROLL
Texas Tech senior right-hander Brandon Roberson has put together a pretty impressive streak as he has now won his last nine games to give him a record of 12-3 on the year. Prior to the Kansas State series, Roberson was last on the team with a 5.86 ERA and had a record of 3-3. Since the first game of the Kansas State series, Roberson has not only won eight straight games but dropped his ERA to 4.19 and has more than doubled his strikeouts (39 previously) to his current 96 which is the most strikeouts by any Tech pitcher.
TECH KEEPS HOME RECORD IN ORDER
Prior to the Iowa State series, Texas Tech was in jeopardy of snapping an eight year streak in which Tech teams have won at least 25 games at Dan Law Field. Despite having arch-rival Texas A&M in final 13-game home stretch, the Red Raiders managed to go 13-0 to give the squad 25 home wins for the ninth consecutive season.
HAYS WINS 1,250TH CAREER GAME
Texas Tech Head Coach Larry Hays earned his 1, 250th career victory on Tuesday, March 13th against the Eastern New Mexico Greyhounds. Coach Hays is currently the fourth winningest active baseball coach in the nation behind Augie Garido (Texas), Chuck Hartman (Virginia Tech) and Gene Stephenson (Wichita State). Hays is the eighth winningest coach in the history of the NCAA.
RED RAIDERS DENIED REGIONAL HOST SITE
Despite going 27-6-1 over the last 34 games of the regular season and capturing second place in the Big 12, Texas Tech was left out of the 16 NCAA regional host sites. The NCAA granted just one regional to the Big 12 and that went to league champion Nebraska. Rice was the only school in the state of Texas to earn a regional host site.
TECH CLAIMS 18+ CONFERENCE WINS AGAIN
Entering the series with Baylor this past weekend, Texas Tech and Baylor were the only two teams to have won 18+ conference games every season since the start of the Big 12 in 1997. After taking the series with Baylor 2-1, Texas Tech is now the only team in the conference to have won at least 18 games each Big 12 season. Tech finished the 2001 conference season with a mark of 19-10-1 while Baylor finished 17-10.
TECH AMONG NATION'S BEST IN STOLEN BASES
Texas Tech is unofficially tied for 11th place in the nation for total number of stolen bases. Since the NCAA does not release team stolen base standings until the end of the season, Jeff Muir (Univ. of Tennessee) complied a Top-10 list according to statistics made available to each conference. Miami leads the nation with 155 stolen bags while Texas Tech is tied with Costal Carolina for 11th place with 107 stolen bases.
HIGHEST SEEDING SINCE 1997
Texas Tech's No. 2 seeding in this year's 2001 Phillips 66 Big 12 Conference Baseball tournament is the highest seeding for the Red Raiders since the 1997 season. Texas Tech was the No. 1 seed in 1997 after winning the inaugural Big 12 regular season championship.
- 1997....Tech was the No. 1 seed and lost to Oklahoma 19-17 in the championship game.
- 1998....Tech was the No. 3 seed and won the Big 12 Tournament with a 14-7 win over Texas A&M.
- 1999...Tech earned the No. 3 seed and was eliminated in two games.
- 2000...Tech was seeded fifth and went 2-2 in the tournament.
A TALE OF TWO TEAMS
When Texas Tech started the 2001 campaign, it looked as though the school's six year streak of NCAA post-season appearances would come to an end. Tech started the year with a 13-10 overall record and dropped its first four conference games of the season good enough for the worst start in over 12 years.
Since the Red Raiders hit rock bottom back in early March, the squad has completely turned the season around. Over the last 34 games, Texas Tech has put up an impressive record of 27-6-1 and is ranked in all three major college baseball polls this week.
STATE CHAMPIONS???
For the first time since the 1994 season, Texas Tech has won the series with all three rival schools in Texas. Texas Tech beat Texas 2-1 in Austin, swept Texas A&M 3-0 in Lubbock and beat Baylor 2-1 this past weekend in Waco to give the Red Raiders a clean sweep of its three rival schools in Texas.
CRANFORD CONTINUES TO ROLL
Junior designated hitter Austin Cranford had yet another big weekend for the Red Raiders in Waco against the Baylor Bears. Cranford hit .583 against the Bears with two doubles, a two-run homer and three RBI.
Cranford finished the 2001 regular season hitting .400 (58 for 145) with 13 doubles, two triples and six home runs. His Big 12 batting average was an overwhelming .449, a mark that led all conference hitters.
McGINLEY SOLID OUT OF THE PEN
Senior closer Blake McGinley proved clutch for the Red Raiders this past weekend in the Baylor series. McGinley pitched 2 2/3rds innings in two different games without allowing a hit and struckout out six batters in the process.
McGinley earned his eighth save of the season against Baylor on Friday night as he pitched the entire ninth inning and preserved the 11-8 Tech lead. On Sunday, McGinley retired three of the final four batters in the bottom of the 10th inning on strikeouts to pick up his third win of the season.
A BAT ON FIRE
The Texas Tech offense has gotten another spark over the last couple of weeks as the bat of Kerry Hodges has returned. Hodges started off the 2001 campaign as one of the best hitters on the squad as the junior Arizona native rattled off a 13-game hitting streak to start the year. At one point in the year, Hodges had an 18 at-bat hitting slump which he snapped against Texas on March 10th. Since the TCU game on April 24th, Hodges has been the leading hitter on the team with a .472 (17 for 36) batting average over the last nine games.
TECH RANKED IN ALL THREE MAJOR POLLS
Texas Tech is ranked in all four of the collegiate baseball polls this week for the first time this season. Texas Tech is ranked 21st by the Baseball Weekly/ESPN Coaches Poll, Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball. Texas Tech debuted this week in both the Baseball Weekly rankings and the Baseball America Top-25 list.
HAYS DOES IT AGAIN
Head coach Larry Hays has accomplished a lot in his 30-year career, but perhaps the 2001 season is one of his best coaching efforts. The Red Raiders are on the brink of earning their seventh straight NCAA appearance despite starting off the season at 13-10. Hays has put together this team on 8.7 scholarships (normal amount is 11.7) due to NCAA sanctions that were imposed on Texas Tech in 1996.
FRESHMAN HAS BIG IMPACT
Freshman Brent Fossum, the only freshman on the Tech roster, has made a big impact for Texas Tech this season but in a very quite manner. Fossum, making 15 starts this season behind senior Jason Rainey in left field, has had several clutch games for the Red Raiders but none as much as the Baylor game this past Sunday. Fossum went just one for two against the Bears but brought in 4 RBI to help send Tech to a 6-5 upset win.
Fossum is batting .300 on the season with five doubles, a triple, a home run and 12 RBI.
+4, -4
Texas Tech scored a season-high four home runs on the Baylor pitching staff on Friday, May 11th and the four fence bombers tied a season high for home runs in a single game for the Red Raiders. On Sunday, Baylor repaid the Tech pitching staff by hitting four home runs of their own erasing the previous high of two set earlier in the season.
DAN LAW FIELD UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Construction has now begun at Dan Law Field and is scheduled to be completed by the start of the 2002 season. During this first phase of renovations, the university will construct a new "major-league" style dressing room complete with floor to ceiling oak lockers, a player lounge, training rooms, coach's offices, indoor batting cages and equipment rooms.
The interior of the stadium will be bricked with the traditional "Chicago Cub" style brick and a new outfield fence will be constructed. The exterior of the stadium will also see its first phase of construction when a brick exterior fence is erected surrounding the stadium.
The second phase of construction calls for a brick facade around the exterior of the stadium that will reflect the Spanish architecture of the campus. A new press box and updated luxury suites will cap off the project.
TECH DEFENSE SETS BIG 12 RECORD
Through the course of 30 Big 12 games this season, the Tech defense accounted for a fielding percentage of .981 which is a new Big 12 Conference record. The previous record was .971 set by Oklahoma in 1999 and Texas in 2000. As a team, Texas Tech not only leads the conference defensively in Big 12 games but overall as well with a .970 fielding percentage.
NOTING TEXAS TECH
- With 39 wins this season, Texas Tech has now won at least 35 games in a single season for the eighth consecutive year.
- Senior left fielder Jason Rainey set a Big 12 record when he tallied three triples in one game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on May 1st. The three triples tied a Texas Tech record set previously by Stubby Clapp, Gary Ashby and Ron Mattson.
- Texas Tech has mercy-ruled four different opponents this season with the last victim being Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on May 1st. The other three mercy rules have come in league play against Kansas State, Iowa State and Texas A&M.
- Texas Tech earned its third series sweep of the season against Kansas in the final home Big 12 series of the season (4/27-4/29).
- Texas Tech has the second best batting average in the Big 12 Conference with a mark of .317.
- Junior hurler Chris Phillips made his first appearance out of the bullpen against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi where he threw 3.0 innings in relief of starter Brandon Roberson. Prior to the game with the Islanders, Phillips had started 15 straight contests.
- The Texas Tech defense ranks 12th in the nation as the squad carries a .970 fielding percentage.
HITTING NOTES
- Senior Jason Rainey is currently tied for 14th in the nation for number of triples this season. Rainey's seven triples this year are just two shy of tying the Texas Tech school record of nine that he sat last season.
- Designated hitter Austin Cranford, Tech's leading hitter, is currently tied for fourth in the Big 12 with a batting average of .400.
- Texas Tech is batting .316 with runners in scoring position and .665 with runners on third with less that two outs.
- Nick Blankenship and Gera Alvarez are 7 and 13 hits away respectively from breaking into the Top 10 for most number of hits in a single season by a Tech player.
- The Tech offense has tallied 17 double-digit hit games over the last 22.
- Tech has seven players with 39+ RBI on the season.